Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

We recently did my truck in dupont centari single stage, it's amazing. With solid colors you can sand and buff it, and it has UV protection in it. Even better, a neat trick we tried and it worked was to use nason's all over clear or high image clear over it, 3ish coats, as it gets tacky. Then you can buff and sand the clear, which has more UV in it. SS is a durable paint too, and the clear is added insurance for buffing, etc. Cheap insurance, and gives you something to work with to really make it shine.

Doing it this way, you'd add about $200 in materials to the car project to add the clear if you sprayed the whole car at once. It looks like a deep color, it's easy to work with, and it looks impressive. I'm very pleased how it came out.

We did it a piece at a time over a year and some of the finish was kind of orange peely depending on humidity, etc. After clear, i blocked everything 1500 with the foam pool noodle looking thing, then DA with 3m/interface pad:

1000
1500
3000
5000

Then buff with white disc/white cream, black disc, purplish cream, blue disc, blue cream. Everything matches, everything gorgeous.

The truck appraised very high, and you can read a book of the smallest print against it. The prep work and finish work make any finish amazing of course. The ONLY downside to SS is that it's harder to repair errors vs basecoat, where you can fix a lot before clear goes on.

With SS, if you don't clear when the paint is wet, you have to sand it all like 800-1000 grit to get the clear to stick well.

Seriously, these pics don't even do it justice, i don't regret going SS at all.

Build thread:

67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=550931&page=16

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I had my 51 painted two years ago with a urethane with a clear coat. Later, got a small dent in the front fender, just under the headlight. With the clear coat, the paint shop told me that they had to paint the entire fender, all the way back to the door. The paint does look good, but it was more expensive to repair the damage than it would have been if it had a single stage paint.

My opinion is that the super shiny paint looks really nice on modern cars and street rods, but it doesn't look like the original lacquer paint jobs of the Packards. But everyone is entitled to their own choice.

It's true that you really couldn't shave in the finish of these cars when they were new...you really can't in your ordinary car now.

I find it strange that they wanted to do your whole fender. Collision shops blend into existing clear in the panels every day. single stage though, you really should be painting to a seam or panel edge or something, it's tougher to do spot touch ups without it showing. Putting clear over it doesn't help with that, just adds to the shine and gives you something to sand/buff without worrying about getting too far into the paint.

For durability you can't beat the base coat clear coat system. However, the water based color coat has not been around long enough to say the same.

I have a attached a photo I stumbled across of a car I worked on along with some other very well known fellows way back in 1974. This car was painted with Bill Hirsch lacquer and prepared with great care. It sure held up great.

I'm not saying it would hold up as well if it was parked outside, but I can't imagine doing a car like this using anything other than lacquer (while it is still available).

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